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Radically different tone

Is the TV licence a subscription? I see it closer to a tax for using a public service or good, like the road or council tax.

I consider it a subscription because it is collected directly by the BBC and spent by the BBC.

Taxes, on the other hand, are collected by the government.


While the BBC is in charge of collecting it, and it is largely (but not exclusively) spent on the BBC, the TV licence is imposed by and paid into the government's funds. The government then "grants" the money back to the BBC.

> The revenue and associated expenditure [...] are those flows of funds which are handled on behalf of the Consolidated Fund and where the BBC acts as agent rather than as principal

https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/ss/Satellite?blobcol=urldata&b...

The Office for National Statistics also classifies it as a tax: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldbb...


It falls between the two.

It is, effectively, a subscription. But it is partnered with statute law which makes it an offence to receive TV broadcast signals without paying this subscription (and now also an offence to watch iPlayer, etc.)... which is unlike most subscriptions.

It's similar to how other governments fund their national broadcaster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence#Television_...

It's seen as strictly better than the government providing funding from general taxation, which would mean directly controlling the state broadcaster and its purse-strings.

And generally speaking, there are very good reasons to fund your country's own film/TV industry, rather than rely on other countries supplying the funding and the media (and the opinions and the cultural sway and the power and the control).


Perfect example of the "Yet you participate in society" meme.

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/259/257/342...


The commenter acknowledges this: "I was always impressed that the laundry managed to get them pristine white again."

I think it's pretty clear they were taking ephemeral notes, not using them for long-term archiving.


I had to abandon it because of the memory leak, it would fill up all my memory in a matter of minutes. The devs don't seem to pay it much attention: https://github.com/anomalyco/opencode/issues/5363


> It is further ordered that all ISPs (including without limitation those set forth in Exhibit B hereto) and any other ISPs providing services in the United States shall block access to the Website at any domain address known today (including but not limited to those set forth in Exhibit A hereto) or to be used in the future by the Defendants (“Newly Detected Websites”) by any technological means available on the ISPs’ systems. The domain addresses and any Newly Detected Websites shall be channeled in such a way that users will be unable to connect and/or use the Website, and will be diverted by the ISPs’ DNS servers to a landing page operated and controlled by Plaintiffs (the “Landing Page”).

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/05/judge-rules-ever...


ISPs just ignored that order.


One of my banking apps didn't even run if I had accessibility settings turned on. I've since closed my account with them, just because of that.

The amount of control we've given corporations over our computers is incredibly disappointing.


Was this in EU/US? This sure has to break some disability act to discriminate visually imparied in such way.


It was in Moldova. Probably illegal there too if someone bothered to challenge it. I just downloaded it again, still won't work.

https://i.ibb.co/6c1MgkJQ/Screenshot-20260320-115310.png


It is interesting that most of these are coming from apps outside the US including the fully developer mode lock outs. US companies seem more comfortable with the mode being enabled which explains why I've never really run into issues with having it turned on.


Isn't this exactly what LLMs themselves do? They ingest other people's data and reproduce a slightly modified version of it. That allows AI companies to claim the work is transformative and thus fair use.


3) If I won't do it, someone even worse will.


The source is a company that works with Polymarket and sells Polymarket data (as well as Kalshi and other gambling platforms).


Marginal revolution has been talking up prediction markets since before they existed. In fact polymarket probably was created after its founder read Cowen's thoughts on prediction markets.


The findings are consistent with academic research that these markets are well calibrated.


Could be, you should reference the academic research then.


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